James Finley opens by tracing his path into the Christian mystical tradition back to a childhood marked by his father's violence and his mother's devout faith, which became a source of survival for him. A high school religion teacher's mention of monasteries and Thomas Merton's writing captivated him, leading him to enter the Abbey of Gethsemani, a cloistered Trappist monastery in Kentucky, at eighteen. He lived there for nearly six years, with Merton serving as his novice master and spiritual director for three of those years, guiding him through the classic mystical texts of St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart, and others.



Finley describes the monastery's rhythm of silence, prayer, and manual labor, and reflects on how his early trauma and his mystical formation became intertwined—describing a childhood experience of dissociating into 'a secret place in God' during his father's abuse, and later recognizing that trauma and transcendence had touched each other in him from the start. He recounts formative encounters with Merton, including being instructed to simply describe his daily life at the pig barn, which he says taught him the power of compassionate, grounding presence. A pivotal mystical experience in a sheep barn loft—a vivid sense of breathing God and God knowing him fully—became a touchstone he returned to throughout his life.

After leaving the monastery, marrying, and teaching high school religion, Finley maintained a contemplative practice while working through a difficult first marriage and writing Merton's Palace of Nowhere, a book on Merton's concept of the true self that eventually led to invitations to lead retreats nationally. On the retreat circuit he met Richard Rohr, and their friendship led to Finley becoming a core faculty member, alongside Cynthia Bourgeault, when Rohr and Bourgeault launched the CAC's Living School. He also describes deepening interfaith engagement—drawing on yoga, Zen, and Rumi—before returning more fully to his Catholic roots after his mother's death.

Corey shares two personal stories illustrating Finley's impact as a teacher: a moment of unexpected grace over lunch during a difficult period in her life, and witnessing another person describe how Finley's teaching on healing helped reparent an experience of childhood loss. Finley reflects on these stories through the lens of psychotherapeutic transference, describing teaching and spiritual direction as ways of offering people a corrective, loving encounter.

In the final section, Finley discusses his life today at 76, caring for his ill wife, no longer traveling, and finding the podcast a providential way to keep teaching from home. He offers a central caveat to the mystical message: acknowledging real suffering rather than spiritualizing it away, while affirming that even amid unraveling, one can be 'unexplainably sustained.' He closes by describing the authenticity of teaching as rooted in vulnerability to one's own fragility as an infinitely loved human being—a theme that frames the podcast series as an invitation into that same living, honest encounter with mystery.

Journal and reflect on the following
  1. On trauma and transcendence touching each other: Finley describes finding 'a secret place in God' as a child during his father's violence, and later recognizing this as both a dissociative survival response and a real encounter with God. Where in your own life have pain and grace been intertwined in ways that resist a simple explanation? Can you hold both truths — the psychological and the spiritual — without needing to choose between them?
  2. On the three questions Merton asked: Merton would ask Finley how it was going in daily life, how it was going with his surrender to the mystery that first touched his heart, and how the mystery was bubbling up into the 'messy details' of ordinary life. If someone asked you these same three questions today, how would you answer each one?
  3. On the 'love wound': St. John of the Cross's image of God as a deer that wounds the heart with love and returns to deepen that wound moved Finley deeply as a young man. Have you ever experienced a moment that was, in his words, 'too beautiful not to be true'? What did it ask of you afterward?
  4. On being 'beyond human help': Finley suggests the mystic teacher's role is to gently show us we're beyond human help, so we can discover a richness beyond our own resources. Where in your life have you come to the end of what you could accomplish on your own — and what, if anything, unexpectedly met you there?
  5. On authenticity as the source of teaching: Finley says the credibility of any teaching comes from the teacher's own vulnerability to their fragile, human, unraveling life — not from having it together. Who in your life has taught you something valuable not through their expertise but through their honesty about their own limitations? How might you offer that same kind of presence to someone else?
Pause and discuss with your family or community.

Pause and listen to the song - 'In the Secret'



Please pray the following prayer

God who hears the cries of the poor, You who came to us even in the middle of the night and carried us to a secret place when the world outside was too much to bear - we come to you now as we are, not as we wish we were. We bring the trembling voice, the trauma we carry, the ways we have learned to guard ourselves against being truly seen. We bring our brokenness, trusting that it is not an obstacle to your love but the very place where your love breaks through most deeply. Teach us, as you taught Jim through Merton's patient compassion, that we do not need to prove ourselves worthy before we are welcomed — that Fidelity to your presence is enough, that sitting quietly and speaking honestly of our ordinary days is itself a form of prayer.

Draw us into the oneness we taste only in fleeting moments - in a breath, in a leaf touched beneath an open sky, in the unguarded kindness of someone who kneels down to meet us eye to eye. Give us the courage to surrender what we cannot control and the patience to trust that even in unraveling, even in aging, even in the diminishments none of us can escape, you are sustaining us unexplainably. Let us become, in whatever fragile way we can, witnesses to others — bearing the same gentle testimony that was given to us, that the love we seek is not far off but already here, closer than our own breath, patient, deathless, and infinitely tender toward all that is broken in us. Amen.

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